I went to the grocery store after work last night. No particular reason – just wanted to surround myself with ignorant, inconsiderate assholes and their screeching spawn. If I lived in Florida, I could have just gone to the Tampa Town Hall Meeting on Heath Care, which turned violent when “angry” protesters carrying racist signs whipped up to a frenzy by their leader, Glenn Beck, and the St. Pete’s Republican Party, started banging on things and getting into fights.
Had I been in St. Louis, I could have gone to the town hall meeting with Russ Carnahan. There, six people – including a Post-Dispatch reporter – were hauled off to the hoosegow.
I don’t know what these people are so “angry” about (and I’ll bet they’d be hard-pressed to articulate just what their problem is, too). If they’re afraid that the insurance companies won’t continue to make huge profits off the suffering of others, they ought to chill out. As Business Week reports, the fight for health care reform is over, and, not surprisingly, the insurance industry has won.
Mostly, I think they’re just terrified white folks, watching as the world changes around them. First a you-know-what gets elected President, and now a “wise Latina” is in charge of deciding their fate in the Supreme Court (though, don’t worry angry old white men, you’re still pretty well-represented on that front, and even the token schwarze is really on your side).
No matter how bad things get for even the trashiest of white folks, they’ve always been able to console themselves with the fact that they’re better than “those people.” Unfortunately (for them), that’s rapidly changing, and soon white people will no longer be better than anybody else. And not long after that, they’ll be in the minority. Now that’s scary.
But, hey, don’t worry angry white people. As far as health care reform goes, you’ve managed to teach “them people” a lesson, and have paved the way for insurance companies to make huge profits in the process. And that’s what it’s all about.